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Is The Father Kukah Led Negotiation Worh Trying? By Bonkoo, Tombari Tobby
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Frederick Douglas, April 1886 on the 24th anniversary of emancipation in the D.C. RECENTLY, the Federal Government in corroboration with the Rivers State Government orchestrated a plot to silence and tactically created a blunder of rapidly bringing Shell back into Ogoni land without tagging along the recommendations and demands of the Ogoni people. The seemingly scam of ignoring all but most pertinently, the sorrow of our just recent past is a concerted efforts from all the stakeholders of this plot to punish and blatantly dehumanized the happy omens and lives of the Ogoni citizenries. In an obvious desperate step to facilitated the abrupt return of the Anglo-Dutch Company back into Ogoni, as the only remedy to curb the overwhelmingly pressure from the western countries for greater supply for crude oil in their continent; the federal government without following a due process of negotiating the fundamental issues that are affecting the Ogoni people, they surpassed these measures by earmarking 6 millions each to the families of the “Ogoni 13” and the assurance of contracts in Rivers State as the shortest way to get back to their oil fields. As commonly known to many Nigerians that the veneration of a Nigerian is not his or her principle and the protection of his or her integrity, but of money. The aggrieved families flew from all over the world in a nuptial bond and happy as a pig in muck with the government in front of national and international media outlets to accept and thank the government for a job well done. What an irony? The tacky scamming approach did not end there, the son of our late martyr, Kenule Saro-Wiwa was immediately offered the job of advisory role in a government that does not believe in true reconciliation, peace and respect of the rule of law. This phony appointment that even in the best of it all, the complexity of Nigeria society is well beyond his ken: because he has never associates himself with the ideals and values of the Nigeria culture before and after the death of his father is another blow to their mischievous plan to prey upon the people of Ogoni. A man who through his adulthood, distance himself from his father because of his staunchly and unwavering determination to bring peace, fairness and respect to every facets of the Nigeria states. I thought such sensitive position requires someone who understands the various cultures and behaviors of the land. Again what a paradox? The elusion of this government is their continues vainglorious policy of not paying attention to the reality of what is on the ground and to have a long term approach that will yield a lasting solution to a long needed peace and stability of the country. The continue creation of various panels to investigate and come up with recommendations that will never be implemented is just a precipice of deficiency of ideas. The truth is that the psyche of the common man in Nigeria is daily assaulted by government officials. Thus, if other major ethnic group in the country (Ijaw) could be so treated, then the common Ogoni man is in great peril. Father Kukah who until recently was a man who represents the ideas and a great crusader of fairness, equality and justice for all Nigerian, is now the perpetrator of jungle maneuver of hatred and government mischievous gorily economic marginalization system. What a great call of purpose for a man purported to be man of God? Ah, ah… That is the true sense of religious affiliation by Nigerian preachers. We shall all stand before God on judgment day. The shielded blood bath of the Ogonis that is used in purifying the nation’s oil will someday catch up with these gangsters who are tirelessly exploiting every veins of the Niger Deltans for their self-ends, just as it catch up with Mobutu of Zaire. The unending echoes of help by thousands of helpless indigenous people of Niger Delta for clean water to drink and zealous quest for their agricultural produce that had been subjected to decade of environmental devastation, thereby, hindering the growth of food crops for survival of its people. The self-acclaimed and imposed Governor of Rivers State who is not from the state but of Igboland is heartlessly working day and night with Father Kukah to hastily fulfill their master’s aspiration of destroying the lives of the Ogoni people before the end of his tenure come May 2007 since the elongation did not sail through. No wonder, he has been granted zillions of awards all over Nigeria and around the world by groups whose interests are protected to the core by the governor. There is a message for Father Kukah; may you in your previous galaxy of forthrightness err on the side of life than of crude inhumane exploitations. Lest I forget, a people whose policy and behavior is not anchored on history shall perish in the face of unprecedented calamity of disdain and foolishness by their thoughtless actions. Looking at the history of leadership in Nigeria, several accords had been signed throughout the years yet successive regime invalidate these accords because it does not suit the order of the day by the oppressor. Without going just too far, from 1999 hitherto the federal government has instituted over five panels with the plan to facilitate and bring a lasting solution (supposedly) to the issues that are affecting the minorities in the country yet none of these reports had ever been implemented. These reports were not submitted to new government but the same government that mandated them, yet they pushed off and stored on the shelves. Thus, even if the current negotiation would have been validated by this current government, the period to effects such changes is so limited that such plans would not sail through, since there is no continuum in policy and successive government will abandon the accord and pursue their policy of divide and run. As we all know, there has never been a continuum of policy both social and economically policy in the government because none of the leaders comes to effects a change in the society. They are there to serve themselves and their sycophants. The most recent of it all, is the planned elongation of tenure of the president when he himself was against such measure when Abacha was in power. These are only policies that are always maintained by successive regime: the policy of killing, corrupting, sits tightening and looting of the nation’s coffer. Of all the pretentious and unrealistic “Marshall Plan” asserted by the president which was celebrated in a grand style by the government and the vultures of Niger Delta last April, couple with the one celebrated here in Washington D.C by governor of Rivers State, influential dignitaries from U.K and the U.S and all major oil companies in Niger Delta in the same month, when will those plans be implemented (?). Or were all does celebrations aimed at cooling off the stigma of violence and lack of control by the state and federal government as promised the oil companies? Maybe those plans will be actualized overnight. Perhaps, there is a message for the Ogoni 9 families who are now selling the lives of their husbands, fathers, and brothers for a sum of $45,000 and a contract. Maybe, they should retrospect the agonies, sufferings, pains and strangulations their kinsmen went through in the prison and when they were hanged. Do those pains worth $45,000 and a petty contract? How much is a barrel of oil today and how many has been exploited out of Ogoni? Do you think that your father, husband and brother will choose to die because of $45,000, a petty contract and most of it all, an advisory appointment (for one year) to a man who was part of their death? How much are these men siphoning from the federal and state coffer whenever they travel outside the country? Maybe, you should confer with some of us who knows much about their spending. Probably, the most recent case of money laundering involving the former governor of Balyesa was over the tone of $1.7 millions in his house in London, and I am sure you all know about it. Do you all really understand what the lives of your kinsmen worth? Invaluably Priceless! When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will. William Shakespeare. “ in Much Ado About Nothing.” The trend of action secretly and publicly by those at the helm of affairs of Mosop and the political class in Ogoni proves a seemingly danger to the lives of the less privilege amongst us. Knowing fully well that the lives of the rural people in Nigeria does depend solely on agriculture and fishing, and we do know that oil exploitation is against these two forms of agricultural system of living, it is fundamentally pertinent that you do not jeopardize the lives stock of these people by negotiating with Shell whose purpose in Nigeria is destroying, sponsor killing and devastating our environments. The youths are watching carefully with close circuit of every facet of actions taken by those of you who are parading tirelessly betraying our beloved people and land for a plate of bouillabaisse. We want to remind you all that as you care so much about your immediate family and other relatives so you vow to care about the interest of the entire Ogoni people. In the word of Simone Weil, “The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question or to any consideration whatsoever.” The needs of the Ogoni people are sacred, and your efforts so far will turn the efforts of our late heroes into a wild goose chase. We know that it is possible to lead astray an entire generation, to strike it blind, to drive it insane, to direct it towards a false goal as Napoleon proved it. Any effort to rewind the clock of Ogoni to the days of KAGOTE where our leaders overloaded the eternal albatross of our youths with greed, neglect and generational decay could no longer be accepted. May I remind us of a statement from formal president John F. Kennedy that “ To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the communist may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society can’t help the many who are poor, it can’t save the few who are rich.” The few of us that considered ourselves as rich may not be able to safe our properties when we continue to ignore, neglect and foreclosure the needs of the poor amongst us. It is crystal clear that based on the proceedings, paths and every step taken by the government, Shell and the negotiating team shows a revanche on the Ogonis. It is time again for people to watch with carefulness the situation in Ijaw today and understand that if we allow this company back into our land, we could not let them out of our land again, because whatever accord sign with them will not be validated nor implemented based on what we know of these pythons. The abrupt formation of a joint military forces in the region that later destroyed a whole village in Ijaw kingdom shows what may be awaiting the Ogoni villages. Who do we have to foretell us when such attack will come to our shores? Even when the Ijaws are in higher number in every facets of the Nigeria army, yet their villages were destroyed for agitating the implementation of various accords signed with the oil companies operating in their territories. Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace, of conscience and of ideology. Because if you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practice ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed. Let us all share the burdens of our land because it is a glorious burden to bear…
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